


Dark Days

by summerdownturn



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Fury Road AU, I have no idea where this is going, M/M, Tags to be added, Violence, but i love it so far
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 09:57:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4517520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdownturn/pseuds/summerdownturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh Dun was perfectly content to live out the rest of his hopefully long life in Rose Borough, a small trading post where he cared for his animals and bartered with the merchants for supplies. Then the war boys came and nothing was the same. He was losing hope, until Tyler Joseph saved him.</p>
<p>And man, was Tyler Joseph quite an adventure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Days

**Author's Note:**

> Blame Abby aka [slashfanatic22](http://archiveofourown.org/users/slashfanatic22) for this fic because we watched Mad Max and brainstormed ideas until I eventually wrote this. Title from Dark Days by PUP which you should listen to because it's absolutely fantastic.
> 
> I have no idea when I'm going to update this or what the end game is. But it's really fun to write!

The heat was blistering in the middle in the summer out in the borderlands between the expanding wasteland and the crossroads.  The temperature was high year round, but was brutal in the long months of summer that blended so easily with the rest of the seasons, if you could even call them that. Water was rising in price, and Josh had to sell his last cow to a market in Crux Keep so he and the rest of his animals could make it through. He might have gotten by if the coywolves didn’t get two of his goats last week.

But there was nothing he could do besides sell their bones, reinforce his fences, and keep alert to the coywolves that were moving down from Black Ridge, desperate for food, as their prey was scarce in the summer. Josh knows that if it weren’t for his goats’ sacrifice, they would’ve gone after a human, and its only time before they get their kill. 

Josh spent most of the time on his small farm. Okay, really it was just a shack that he slept in, a small barn and a dusty pasture at the edge of Rose Borough, but it was _his_. He had been doing this by himself for nearly a decade now after taking over after his father had fallen ill, raising chickens, goats, sheep, and cows if he was lucky.

Josh was fortunate to have the land he had, as most of the Borough was just a trading post a few miles out from Crux Keep, the center of the North District, and the last stop before hundreds of miles of wasteland separating the other districts. He would love to be able to afford land within the Keep’s limits, but it was much more expensive, and Josh would rather keep to the tight knit group of merchants that offer him low prices and like to barter when he doesn’t have the money. And when he did need the money, they always offered him pay for hard labor, or even just tending to their shops.

But what Josh was most known for in the Borough was to keep the bandits and rogues away.

There wasn’t much of an enforced law in the Borough. It was in the borderlands, so that meant it was too close to the freedom of the wastelands and too far away from the structure of the big cities. Bandits often came from the wasteland and try to steal and terrorize the town, and since Josh was only one of the young men in the city, it was usually him and the incredibly muscular blacksmith taking care of it.

Between bandits and coywolves, goats and merchants, Josh was starting to wear a little thin. Especially when he had difficult customers.

“I’m sorry, sir, I’m down to my last mating pair. There’s nothing I can do for you at that price. You’re going to have to go into the Keep for your goats.”

“Listen here, boy. I’ve traveled all the way from the Citadel. I’m not leaving without those goats!” The man shouted, stepping into Josh’s personal space. Josh didn’t back away. Instead, he put his hand on his gun holster, ready to draw his pistol if needed.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, sir.” Josh growled out, thoroughly done with the man’s attitude. The man made a move at Josh but Josh was quicker, drawing his knife tucked hidden beneath his holster and pressed it into the man’s neck. “I’m not going to ask again.” He warned, backing the man into the wall of his shack. The man glared but made no move, and Josh only removed the knife when then man slowly lifted his hands in surrender. The man huffed and walked away, but not before spitting a wad of chewing tobacco at Josh’s feet.

Josh didn’t relax until he saw the man get back in his truck and speed off towards Cruz Keep. He let out the breath he had been holding and retreated back into his shack. The people he dealt with were usually less than cooperative, especially when he was low on stock. 

Josh was about two seconds from screaming as he heard another knock on his door, but as he whipped the door open, he easily deflated when he saw an old woman. “Hey, Jo. Sorry, I was expecting another asshole.” Josh rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment and moved aside to let the old woman inside.

Jo snorted in amusement, “I know. Men these days with no respect.” She sat down on a wooden stool in the corner of the small room and Josh moved to the kitchen area to light a fire and put the kettle on. Josh listened intently as Jo talked about all of the rude customers she had that day. She was the Borough’s tailor along with her husband who was the tanner. Josh gave them wool and hide whenever he could spare and they always made him something in return.

Josh gave his guest a cup of tea and sat down on his bed with his own cup.

“Thank you, dear.” Jo took a sip and sighed in content. “The world has gone to hell but I can always count on you being a gentleman.”

“How has Ross been?” Josh questioned politely over his cup of tea. He enjoyed visits from Jo because she was one of the only sources of communications he had. She was rather up to date with all the gossip of the cities, and that was about the only entertainment there was anymore.

“He’s been doing wonderful. Those herbs you gave him worked wonders for his cough. But enough about my husband and me. I came here to give you this.” Jo set down her cup carefully on the milk crate that acted like a side table and rummaged in her bag before pulling out a jar. “You’re hair has been fading rather fast lately so I made it more concentrated. We need to have our Josh intimidating to scare off the raiders.”

Josh took the jar of red dye from Jo and turned it over in his hands with a smile. Pretty much the only dyes that were easy to find were earth tones or mudded hues, and bright colors were near impossible to get hands on for a low price. But Jo had her sources, and traded Josh the dye for a few bottles of goat’s milk every few months. 

“Thank you so much, Jo. I’ll have to touch up my hair tonight.” Josh put the jar away safely before going into his plans for dealing with the coywolves. “Make sure Ross knows he’s going to be getting a lot of hides from me. I can’t afford to lose another goat.” They talked all the way until dusk, until Jo had to go home and Josh had more errands to do around his land. Josh made sure to walk her home before he got to business cleaning up for the night. 

He put the animals safely in the barn, and then Josh walked around the perimeter to make sure there was no way for a coywolf to get in. He cleaned up the pasture, checking to make sure the fence was secure, before he headed in for the night.

He stripped out of his clothes before he got two jars of dye out, one less permanent than the other. Josh only owned one mirror, and he used it to carefully apply the stronger concentrated dye to the curls on his head. He had just had Jo cut his hair last week, so he used less dye than he would normally. Josh left the buzzed sides of his head alone, carefully making sure that none of the dye would drip before he got started on dinner. The dye would take a while to set, but hopefully the sun wouldn’t bleach it out as fast with Jo’s new concentrated mixture.

Josh ate his dinner quickly. It was bland and there was no reason to savor it, and he found his eyes trailing over to the roughed up snare drum in the corner. He hadn’t played it in awhile, not since he had started taking extra shifts watching out for raiders and helping Bill out in the ammunition shop. But Josh shook the thought of playing out of his head and set out to clean up his dishes and straighten out the room.

By the time he was done, Josh went out back to the water tap, pumping out a steady stream before sticking his head under to wash out the majority of the dye. The water spilled was quickly soaked up into the dry ground, and Josh toweled off his hair with an old rag, staining it red. He would probably be sweating red for weeks, but it certainly was intimidating. He went back inside to change back into his clothes, some black cargo pants, worn combat boots, and an off-white tank top with grease stains on it. It was hard to keep anything white in the desert where everything was always carrying a layer of dust.

Josh pulled out the second bottle, opening it and moving to the mirror to carefully spread the red dye around his eyes. The raiders often used war paint so it made sense for him to have his own. He then painted two stripes from his chin down his neck to the pit of his clavicles where the lines met. He added a third shorter stripe in between the other two to fill in more of the space down his neck. Finally, Josh painted under his cheekbones, angling a straight line down outside his jowls to complete a hollow look of a skull.

But he wasn’t done. Josh added bands of red to his left arm as well, leaving his right arm free of the dye. His right arm already had a permanent array of colors surrounding a tree that crawled up his forearm. Greens, reds, and oranges swirling into the blues and yellows on his bicep. It was his most prized possession. One that he worked hard for. Tattoos we’re relatively cheap in the city, but what he really paid for was the colors. It’s not often you got to see the greens of inner Crux Keep, and Josh decided he wanted to carry those colors everywhere with him, a change of stimulation from the browns and tans of the Borough.

Once he was all painted, the dye drying quickly on his skin, Josh grabbed his jacket and scarf along with the leather satchel Ross had given him a few years back. He made sure he had his pistol and various knives in all their holsters before grabbing the rifle by his bed and headed out. He met the ammunition vendor and blacksmith in the center of the Borough and the walked to the edge of town to start the watch for bandits.

Josh usually was the one who walked around the perimeter while the other two guards sat at lookout posts so Josh could check up on his land to make sure coywolves weren’t prowling around.

Everyone was peacefully asleep as the night turned into the early morning, when suddenly there was a whistle from the front of town. Josh ran to the call, seeing the blacksmith looking into a pair of binoculars and the weapons vendor getting his gun ready.

“What’s going on?” Josh asked as he ran up to the pair. Rex, the blacksmith, grunted and handing him the binoculars. Josh looked through them to see a cloud of dust on the horizon. He looked closer to see vehicles, a lot of them, modified with spikes and other weapons.

Josh’s mouth went dry and his heart nearly stopped. “War boys,” he whispered, afraid that his voice would crack if he raised it any louder. Josh was frozen as Rex took back the binoculars.

“Fucking war boys. Just what we need.” Rex grumbled out, keeping watch on the deadly party that was heading towards them. War boys were from the Citadel, sick boys with a death wish that only answered to a crazy lunatic that controlled the city. They weren’t necessarily raiders, but rather suicidal savages that destroyed towns and killed people for the fun of it, drying out the local water and fuel supply to create ghost towns.

“Should we send up the flare?” Bobby, the ammunition vendor, spoke up, giving both of them extra ammo for their rifles. Rex just nodded before turning to them both.

“It looks like some are breaking off to head to Rust Bay and Scorch City as well.” He informed them, shouldering his rifle before going to get the flare that would alert the nearest city, Crux Keep, that they were in danger. Josh couldn’t take his eyes off of the vehicles that would arrive in about ten minutes. He caught sight of the other two cities to the east sending up bright red flares just as Rex sent theirs up as well.

There was no way they would survive this, Josh told himself. There were three of them and at least thirty war boys on vehicles heading straight for them. They were dead. Josh vaguely noticed his breaths were coming short, his limbs tingling and a tunnel surrounded his blurring vision. A few raiders they could handle. But nothing close to this. _We’re going to die_ was running over and over throughout Josh’s head, only stopped by a shaking of his shoulder and a shout in his face.

“Josh! Warn the others!” Rex yelled at him, snapping him out of his episode. Josh nodded before running off, knocking on all the doors he passed.

“Raiders!” He shouted, “War boys from the Citadel!” There wasn’t much the other residents of Rose Borough could do, they were mostly elderly, but they deserved a warning to prepare and protect themselves from the oncoming danger. Josh had no idea what the war boys were doing this far northeast. They weren’t exactly close to the Citadel, and the Citadel had plenty other closer cities to trade with. The only thing that made sense if they were trying to take over Crux Keep, meaning that there will probably be war rigs coming after the initial wave to take out the supporting outer towns. Had things become that desperate in the west, or was the Citadel just power hungry?

A pair of golden eyes reflecting back at him as he neared his land stopped Josh from his racing thoughts. A coywolf. Josh growled as the animal slinked towards him, raising his rifle and preparing to shoot. Before he could, a spear landed into the head of the coywolf, and Josh startled. Eyes wide, he looked up to see five war boys jumping off of a rig, smiling devilishly at him. They were coming in from south as well.

Josh had barely a second to fire his rifle at one before an explosion sent him crashing to the ground, his rifle flying out of his hands and skidding across the ground several feet away from him. Josh quickly grabbed his knife, his ears ringing and head foggy, but he managed to get his knife into a war boy before the war boy’s knife got to him. Josh quickly jumped up, grabbing another boy with a growl, getting an elbow in the face before Josh sliced his arm and then his throat, blood spurting out onto his face.

Then Josh was down on the ground again, tackled from behind by two war boys who were doing all they could to keep him down, pining his head down into the dirt. Josh grunted as he tried to swing his knife back, but the boy easily caught his arm and twisted it, causing Josh to yell out and release his knife.

“This one is naughty.”

“Aw, he doesn’t know that he lost.”

Josh tried to buck up and keep fighting, grunting as more weight pinned him down into the dirt, his other arm being twisted behind his back and Josh’s heart sank as they cuffed him. He growled in anger and tried once more to get the weight off of him, but the boys just laughed.

“He’s feisty.”

“Little Red here would make a good slave to break.”

“Mmm, such beautiful hair, boy.”

The taunts and sneers kept coming as they searched him, taking his gun holster and all the knives he kept hidden. When they reached for his satchel, Josh lost it. “Don’t fucking touch that!” Startling them, he managed to shake them off and slam his head into one of theirs, before he tried to scramble away. The other war boy managed to grab his legs and pull him back, and Josh yelled. 

“Not so fast, Red.” He chuckled madly, taking a seat on his back while the other war boy shook out of his daze and picked up his satchel again. Josh grunted as he pulled out his dyes, and the pale boy laughed.

“Don’t worry, Red. We’ll be sure to keep you all nice and pretty wherever you end up.” He put the jars back into the back and pulled out several photographs instead. “Oh pretty, pretty family.” The boy sneered, waving the photos in front of Josh’s face before he went through the rest. “I bet they looked absolutely lovely when they were bleeding out,” the boy snickered, and Josh could only spit at him.

“Shut the fuck up!” The only thing fueling him was rage and terror at the moment, and Josh could feel his arms shaking underneath the weight of the war boy that was sat on top of them. Josh felt hot tears sliding down his cheeks as the boy continued to taunt him, and Josh couldn’t do anything but take it. As he tried to tune out the mocking voice of the war boy, Josh became aware of the screams around him. He could see flames and smoke and blood surrounding him, and Josh wished that they had killed him with the rest of his village.

Eventually they hauled him to a standing position and he stumbled as they lead him to the back of a truck, tightening his restrains before connecting them to truck bed beneath him. Now that he was upright, he noticed the trickle of blood sliding down the side of his face. He probably looked horrific, covered in dirt, red dye, and blood.

Josh numbly stared as they loaded up the truck with supplies, and Josh startled when a beat up red snare drum was thrown in the back with him. Josh had no idea what they needed a drum for, and Josh thought bitterly that they were just trying to mock him further. He tried his best to curl in on himself as they started moving.

There was a banging on the side of the truck and Josh looked up to find the war boy with his satchel savagely smiling at him from on top of what was once Josh’s motorbike.

“Have a fun ride, Red!” He cackled before driving off.

Josh tried his hardest to calm the storm of emotions burning inside of his chest, but the harder he tried to force them back, the faster the tears came. Josh decided to lie down as best as he could to get comfortable. There was a long drive ahead.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave kudos and comments for encouragement! Let me know if you would like to see more of this. I may even do some fan art for it, idk. I already made a shitty edit of Josh's war paint.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://summerdownturn.tumblr.com)


End file.
